Jay Slater's father 'disappointed' at number of volunteers searching in Tenerife for missing teenager

Transcript

00:00The father of Jay Slater has hit out at online trolls during the latest search efforts in Tenerife.

00:07He's urged online sleuths to come and see for themselves just how difficult the search is.

00:13Despite a massive operation involving dogs, drones, helicopters, mountain rescue teams,

00:19there still has been no trace of the 19-year-old for almost a fortnight.

00:24Let's head to Tenerife and senior global reporter for Mail Online, Nick Pizza. What's the latest,

00:29Nick? Yeah, as you said in your introduction, there was a search yesterday of the Masca Valley

00:35area with helicopter drones and some dogs as well. But the key thing is they'd asked for

00:41volunteers the day before and only six people turned up. That was the TikTok mountaineer Paul

00:48Arnett, a German couple and four Spaniards. And there's a little bit of frustration from Paul

00:53really because it took so long to get everything going and for people to be registered. So he

00:58actually decided to go off on his own because he was so angry with what happened. And they spent

01:03the day up there and the foot search ended at about four o'clock. A helicopter passed over

01:07several times in the afternoon as well. But the police announced that there was no trace of Paul

01:12and we wait to see, sorry, no trace of Jay. We wait to see what happens today if the search

01:16continues. They've said it will do, but we're waiting to get an update later on this morning.

01:20I can tell you that Jay's father, Warren, also arrived with his brother, Zach, and we had a

01:25brief conversation. They were both very emotional, as you can imagine, and they weren't happy,

01:30as you said in the introduction, with the trollers because he's absolutely right, that terrain up

01:33there is absolutely treacherous. There's steep cliffs, there's ravines, deep gullies. You need

01:40proper equipment and you need to know what you're doing. You know, you can't just go up there in

01:43your Sunday hiking gear. It's technical and it needs people with experience to go up there.

01:48But he was disappointed that only six volunteers had turned up.

01:53I know that you've been looking at all the other, I mean, of course, all the other ideas about why

02:00Jay would have gone missing in that area. Are you satisfied yourself that simple, well, not simple

02:06searching, but all of this amazing searching that's going on is going to yield anything?

02:11Or do you think the whole idea of what happened to Jay may be somewhere else, something else?

02:17Well, they're certainly doing a good job out there. They've been up there for nearly two weeks

02:22in pretty difficult conditions. They're doing their best they can.

02:27It is unusual, though, as you say, I mean, they've been up there two weeks, still no trace.

02:32The police and the mountain rescue teams are really focusing on that area by the

02:36mascot porch because they say that's where his mobile phone last pinged

02:40and that's where they think he is. The working theory that they are looking at is that perhaps

02:45he got a little bit disorientated as he walked up the hill and then he saw the sea and he decided

02:51to head towards the sea because he knew if he could get to the sea, to the coastline,

02:55he could turn left and reach his accommodation at Los Cristianos. But obviously the distances are

03:01vast. We're talking about 19 miles and crossing that tricky terrain, you don't hold up much hope

03:07really, which is terrible and awful for the family. Yeah, it certainly is and no answers on the

03:13horizon. Nick, for now, thanks very much indeed. It's thoroughly depressing and the reality is,

03:22of course, they're not going to keep searching for much longer. No, but when do they decide

03:26to call it off?